Unofficial news and tips about Google

February 24, 2008

YouTube Down For Almost an Hour

Believe it or not, YouTube has been inaccessible in any corner of the world for about an hour. Among other consequences, all the sites that embed YouTube videos will load much slower and you won't be able to play the videos. OpenDNS has an explanation for this: "Youtube.com is down right now because Pakistan Telecom has decided to (accidentally probably) hijack their IP address space which means that nobody in the world can reach Youtube." The Pakistani government blocked the access to YouTube "because of content deemed offensive to Islam".

It is actually not too difficult, if the downstream ISP isn't filtering properly. If YouTube's IP space is only a few netblocks, one can announce them very specifically (perhaps as individual "class C" or /24 routes), and those routes will supercede the less specific announcement (as a single aggregate block). Typically, though, the world is protected from this behavior (whether intentional or otherwise) by filters at the ISP level. Apparently the Pakistani entity that made the announcement is connected well enough that filters were not in place to protect the rest of the world from propagating their "black hole" announcement...

I didn't understand any of this yesterday, but from my reading today, here's my analogy that may help other people. People that know better, please correct me if needed.

Pretend you're going to the movies to see "Superbad". But suppose that just before you got there, some guy named Pak decides to open up his own ticket line, and he put a sign up that said "Buy Superbad tickets here". Since that's what you want to see, you go wait in his line. Well, it turns out that Pak thinks "Superbad" is not an appropriate movie, so he sells you a bogus ticket. Then when you try to go into the theater, you're denied access. So Pak shut down access to "Superbad" by creating his own line. Eventually the movie theater would catch on that he's doing it and put a sign up saying to ignore his line.

Hopefully that captured the issue without being too goofy. I read http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/02/pakistan_hijacks_youtube_1.shtml for details and had to google for terms I didn't know.

The 'net' is not 'secure' by any stretch from 'disruption', man-made or natural. Remember those 'cables' knocked out a week or so ago that knocked out the internet in Iran? It's kinda naive of 'us' to think there aren't greater and powerful forces at work to CONTROL access and distribution. Honest fellas. Think about it.

It's essentially like 'accidentally' hijacking an area code to route it to somewhere else instead. This probably can happen in the telephone world, but there are lots of safeguards in place to prevent it. Also, the telephone world is strictly divided up by border so there's easy to make 'zones', this same division doesn't exist on the internet. Just like aircraft manufacturers say after an accident is due to the operator's problem:

youtube had a scheduled downtime. it was clearly posted on their posted on their website all day prior. I would appreciate if you would amend your blog to represent this. The fact that such an absurd idea as Pakistan blocking youtube was even considered makes me seriously question if I want to continue subscribing to this website.

No, there wasn't any scheduled downtime. These are announced beforehand and you'll still be able to access the homepage. From BBC:

<< The ban was instigated by Pakistan on Friday. At the time, the BBC News website's technology editor, Darren Waters, said that to block citizens from accessing YouTube it was believed Pakistan Telecom "hijacked" the web server address of the popular video site.

Those details were then passed on to the country's internet service providers so that anyone in Pakistan attempting to go to YouTube was instead re-directed to a different address.

But the details of the "hijack" were leaked out into the wider internet by Hong-Kong based provider PCCW and as a result YouTube was mistakenly blocked by other ISPs around the world.

The block on the servers was lifted once PCCW had been told of the issue by YouTube engineers.

A statement from Google said that the problems lasted for "about two hours".

"Traffic to YouTube was routed according to erroneous internet protocols, and many users around the world could not access our site," it said.

A leading net professional told BBC News: "This was probably a simple mistake by an engineer at Pakistan Telecom. There's nothing to suggest this was malicious." >>

May 3rd 14:15 to current youtube down, google ip aggress and type that in it goes to youtube but all videos and most content missing no access to account section and fails to read cookie detailing logged in info.

This is absolute shit, if they are gonna react and block it at least have the fucking competence to do it correctly than worldwide. Pakistan have no jurisdiction over the internet, yet again balls bigger than their brain (not literally)

One major service provider, Micronet, said in an email to subscribers that the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority had directed all ISPs to block access to YouTube "for containing blasphemous web content/movies."

"Meanwhile Internet users can write to YouTube.com to remove the objectionable web content/movies because this removal would enable the authorities to order un-blocking of this website," the email said.

YouTube will go down for days and possibly weeks by the end of this year 2008. A new virus/worm is being created which will unleash the largest DoS attack on an internet company ever seen. The worm will contain a replication-mutation algorithm which will make it impossible to contain.

Most likely causes:You are not connected to the Internet. The website is encountering problems. There might be a typing error in the address.

What you can try: Diagnose Connection Problems

More information

This problem can be caused by a variety of issues, including:

Internet connectivity has been lost. The website is temporarily unavailable. The Domain Name Server (DNS) is not reachable. The Domain Name Server (DNS) does not have a listing for the website's domain. If this is an HTTPS (secure) address, click Tools, click Internet Options, click Advanced, and check to be sure the SSL and TLS protocols are enabled under the security section.

For offline users

You can still view subscribed feeds and some recently viewed webpages.To view subscribed feeds

Click the Favorites Center button , click Feeds, and then click the feed you want to view.

To view recently visited webpages (might not work on all pages)

Click Tools , and then click Work Offline. Click the Favorites Center button , click History, and then click the page you want to view.

Well I Love Youtube But The Only thing is it doesnt work on mine i go on it and it says Internal Sever Error And It Keeps Doing That! And I Cant Get On To It I Think Its Virus On My Computer because last week My Mum Fixed my computer Took Al the Viruses Off It And Then Youtube Worked! Now I Must Off got More Some How Properly From My msn When People Send You Virus Stuff I Dont Delet Them Or It Could Be Anything Else I Download So Every Just Warning You Dont DownLoad To Much Stuff And Be CareFull It Might Crash Ur Computer!

youtube has got everyone fooled. Im more than sure that this is due to the fact that this large website has generated more traffic than ever before once linked with Google. With that being said, who really runs google.com? I think its safe to say that the source lies within google and not youtube, this is out of reach on any normal humans control. Trying to long on to youtube and being re routed to a url that doesnt correspond with the correct url of youtube. Got damn people wtf is going on with youtube, ever since they linked with google shit has gone to the pits for them. Oh well fuck youtube there are pleanty of web sites to watch videos, youtube is out the game!

Youtube is down because it takes to long to load a video. I watched jkl productions and jon and katie thought youtube froze up for some reason and did not watch viseos or check to see their comments. They played a game of catch for a while.

i dont know if youtube is down or what. last night i was watching a funny video on youtube but after clicking the next video, it didnt showed the site any more. i cant access youtube with its direct URL but when i type the IP of youtube (208.65.153.253) it showed me the site but cant play videos. and when i used proxy server it also showed the site but same thing, cant play videos. ive already updated my flash player and java, but same thing happened. ive tried to disable components on services and startup at msconfig that might be blocking the site, but still failed to access it. tried various browsers like IE, FF, OPERA etc. but still cant access it. tried putting youtube on the exceptions of IE and FF, still failed to access. tried using other computer, still failed to access youtube. tried resetting my pc, still failed to access. question is.. why cant i access youtube on its direct url but can be accessed on its IP and using proxy but failed to view the videos? where could be the problem?

The 'net' is not 'secure' by any stretch from 'disruption', man-made or natural. Remember those 'cables' knocked out a week or so ago that knocked out the internet in Iran? It's kinda naive of 'us' to think there aren't greater and powerful forces at work to CONTROL access and distribution. Honest fellas. Think about it.

also here in mexico there was a video mocking the government of a state governor,and the mexican electoral institute(president)did not like it at all,and also the video of the guatemalan lawyer that was murdered.,maybe the fascists are realizing youtube is opening peoples eyes in a way.

Yesterday I was having problems logging in. I thought they where doing site maintaince, but today all I get is a Google Server Error. Looks like they really screwed something up or a mass virus got into there servers...